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Fabric shopping.
My eye is caught by a bright green lacy Indian cotton eyelet, with border scallops. It’s available in about 40 colors. Many of them are beautiful colors, tan, rose, deep red, brown, navy– but my eye keeps going back to that green. Why? It’s not a color that looks great on me…but the color makes me happy. It’s bright, and cheery. I impulse buy 1 1/2 yards–it’s not expensive, and “I can make a skirt out of that.” (That’s my default fabric buying excuse. I can always easily make and wear one more skirt.)

Plus, if I make a skirt out of that, I’ll wear it with some other color that looks better on my skin, next to my face. (Yes. I rationalize. But that green!)

At home, I pin the fabric to my dummy. (I’m calling her “Long Tall Sally”, because that’s the song that popped into my head one day when I walked into my sewing room and saw her standing there.)

It looks good, but looking at it, I realize that I’ve been down this path, before. Why, yes–I might have been seduced by citrus green fabric with an embroidered scalloped border design, before, in my sewing lifetime. Even, before, thought the same thought: “I can make a skirt out of that!”

And indeed, it turns out, I can, and I already did.

(vintage “handmade mess” sewing project, circa 2000.)

Why, look at that.

Apparently, it is a color for which I have a lifelong affinity, particularly when there are little stitched-on leaves and flowers. And my go-to solution is to put it in a skirt, where it won’t be next to my face. So I’m rethinking my plans for this fabric. How many scalloped-edged, lacy green skirts does a person need? (Stay tuned to find out what becomes of this year’s length of lace…)